Image courtesy of the DLC. Licensed under CC BY SA.

It has occurred to me recently that I might benefit from therapy. However, released as I have been from the comforting bosom of student health care, I have no idea about how to seek out a therapist.

I figured I’d start with Yelp.

It turns out that, unfortunately, the same site that I use to find every taco joint in midtown Atlanta is not a particularly appropriate resource for mental health care. All of the results it turned up were for massage therapy and marital counseling.

I did learn that I live next to a massage place, though, so that’s very exciting.

After giving up on that particular failed Yelpisode, I busied myself with my new favorite hobby: listening to this song, on loop, forever. (Occasionally I get bored with it, at which point I break out the best “Seven Nation Army” cover.) Last week, to expand my horizons beyond those two songs, I made a Spotify playlist called “Pretending I Live in an Anthropologie,” intending to fill it mostly with wispy, acoustic pop in foreign languages.

For authenticity, I Googled “Anthropologie music,” which of course turned up a comprehensive list of the music they play in the stores, typed out by a former employee, because Internet.

I am officially at a point in my life where I am okay having my personal soundscape curated by Very Cool 25-year-olds managing retail. Sixteen-year-old me is side eyeing hard through time.

A few weeks ago, my younger sister commented that one of her friends was jealous of my life. I asked why, as I had literally just finished cleaning up cat shit and eating yogurt for lunch, and was not feeling at the Top of my Game.

“You live in a studio apartment. In midtown. With a cat.”

At which point I started laughing. Because I can totally picture the Holly Golightly version of myself that that girl was thinking of. It doesn’t matter that that isn’t true, or that I spend a substantial amount of time feeling remarkably lonely, or that I have to sleep in a creaky loft bed to accommodate my tiny, tiny apartment.

It would be easy for me to fantasize about being a junior in college again, if I didn’t have written proof that (though some parts were fun) it was often horrible and I spent some of it crying in my car to pop music. It is always impressive to me the speed at which the human brain can shove unpleasant emotions back away to the point that they’re not strongly felt. Because I realize that I was upset when I wrote both of those blog entries, and yet I remember nothing about why or how it felt.

And that’s reassuring for me. If I just accept that it’s okay for the next six months (or even year) to suck, it takes some pressure off. And I know that, based on what I know about myself, I will forget about it in favor of whatever better things come after (or happen now–as weird and sad as I am, life right now is pretty great).

Until then, I can sit in my midtown studio, listening to wispy pop music with my cat. Things could be worse.